Archive for April, 2016

To study what are and will be end-time occurrences on earth, both before and after the Rapture of the Body of Christ, it is necessary to go deeper into God’s Word. For one who is truly born again, the question is what is that person doing for God to advance, as The LORD’s prayer insists: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6: 10).”

If that person is in the United States, is that one witnessing for Christ on a regular basis? Some time ago a viewer called into Worship Center Radio (where this blogger has an internet radio television program, “Home for Today and Tomorrow”) from a nation oversees that is hostile to the Gospel.

He explained that in his country one is not free to witness about Christ, because he would be jailed or executed. He acknowledged that he hides his radio until late at night when everyone is sleep, and keeps it down very low, so that he can listen to the station’s Christian programs. That man’s testimony is akin to 1 Thessalonians 1: 6: “And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost.”

Are there similar testimonies for U.S. believers today? Are we waiting for The LORD’s appearance as in I Thessalonians 1: 9-10: “For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.”

The station has not heard from him again. Perhaps he has suffered what happens in many countries today, the ultimate fate of being a Christian. Apostle Paul makes clear that afflictions come when presenting the Gospel to unbelievers: “For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews:

“Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost I Thessalonians 2: 14 – 16).”

As 1 Thessalonians is the main Book in wholesale Christian Bibles that goes deeply into The Rapture of Christians from this earth, it takes great pains to explain in chapter 4: 1 – 12 the requirements for getting on this first “glory train”: i.e. no sexual activity outside of marriage and no financial fraud or deception, etc.

But for those who will get deeply dedicated into obeying Christ and His Word a glorious day awaits: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18).” Let us pray for one another that we get on this first glory train!

While our sister site, worldscollide-culture-christianity-endoftime.com, covers what will happen on earth after born-again Christians are ‘raptured’–i.e.caught away instantly in-mass from this planet–various postings in this blog will explore: 1) Why true Christians will be raptured–(i.e. taken away from earth) early in the next few years; and 2) What those Christians will experience after that Rapture.

Some of the amazing sights The Body of Christ will see are outlined (and/or detailed–it is difficult to conceive that earthly wisdom and imagination about realities cannot truthfully or fully fathom eternal substances that take place in the Third Heaven, which is the place of God, The Father’s, once-eternal home) in the Book of Revelation, chapters 4 and 5. But these promises should be both comforting and exciting–to some, if not all, Christians.

First, believers must remember that even during His earthly ministry, The LORD Jesus promised to come back for The Church, which The Bible refers to as the remainder of His Body:

“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself;that where I am, there ye may be also (John 14: 1 – 3).”

Second, The LORD Jesus warned true Christians to be ready to leave at His ‘first’ coming called the Rapture: “And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.

“For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man (Luke 21: 34 – 36 in wholesale Christian Bibles).” (His Second Coming will be when He touches down on earth with His angels and the full Body of Christ to take all power away from the Anti-Christ and those enemy hosts).

Third,because The LORD Jesus had a resurrection, Christians, or The Body of Christ must also have a resurrection: “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming (1 Corinthians 15: 21-23).”

Remember that The LORD arose early on the “third day”–i.e. at the end of two days as in Luke 10 where the Good Samaritan told the end keeper to care for the injured man for which he would pay him two pence, worth two days wages. And that Apostle Peter said a day with The LORD is as a thousand years (2 Peter 3:8).

Thus, The LORD Jesus was the beginning of the resurrection and His full body (i.e. those dedicated born-again believers, both alive now and in the grave) will complete His resurrection. So see you soon during that “upward” journey. Don’t forget to catch our other blog as well as our internet radio and TV program on Worship Center radio and You Tube until that glorious time!

When the newly converted Roman emperor became a Christian, he decreed that time keepers must recognize the birth or crucifixion dates of God’s Son by noting a change of time into B.C. (i.e. before Christ) and A.D. (i.e. after God’s appearance on earth) indicating After Christ. Thus, A.D. Year One is either 29 years after the birth of Christ, or after His crucifixion.

Before relating the significance of those 29 “missing” years to the year 2016, a lok at Luke 10: 30 – 37, and 2 Peter 3: 8 is necessary. In the Luke 10 account, “a certain man” is obviously a Jew because he was traveling to Jericho, a city dedicated wholly to the Jewish priesthood, where (according to the Dake’s Bible) 12,000 priests lived. But thieves stripped him of his identifying priestly garments. Note that where the first Hebrew priest, Levi, took off his holy garments, he died. Likewise, this traveling priest was severely wounded and left to die.

Yet two supposedly religious Jewish leaders—“a certain priest”—obviously a Biblical way of saying an unholy or unrighteous priest—and a Levi (i. e. a temple priest’s helper), both looked at their wounded “partner” and left him on the road forsaken and there to finish dying.

Consider that these two religious characters represented the spiritually blind Jewish leadership and most of its nation after the crucifixion and resurrection of The LORD Jesus Christ—i.e. it was half dead and dying, especially after Jerusalem fell some 70 years after His death.

But a Samaritan—a rejected non-Jewish Gentile—had compassion upon the dying priest, pouring the healing properties of the blood of Jesus and oil of The Holy Spirit into his wounds, and put the dying Jew on his animal ride, while the “Samaritan” walked to “the inn,” a building serving as a “temporary hospital for the sick.” The kind Samaritan continued to care for the wounded priest throughout that day and night.
When he left the next day, he instructed the “host” or inn keeper with “two pence” with instructions to “Take care of him.”

According to Dake, “two pence” equaled to two days pay. So a Gentile paid an economic host to take care of this representative of a “Jewish nation” for “two days”. However, in 2 Peter 3: 8, Apostle Peter defines those two days as “two thousand years”: “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with The LORD as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Note that the Samaritan (one rejected by the Jews as was Christ) said he would return in two days.

Thus, if the Samaritan represents The LORD Jesus telling the Gentile nations (specifically the United States) to take care of Israel, and promising to return in “two days” or in two thousand years, in this year of 2016, the assumption must be that The LORD Jesus is returning soon.

And that “soon” must be two thousand years after His death and resurrection, not after his birth (as that time would be before 2,000 years were up—i.e. this is the year of Two Thousand and Sixteen). All of which means that The Body of The LORD Jesus Christ—i.e. authentically born-again Christians—has only about 14 years more before The LORD returns in “The Rapture” as discussed in wholesale Christian Bibles:

“13But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.
14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
15For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.
16For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord (I Thessalonians 4: 13 – 17).”

So make sure you are ready! This struggle on earth is almost over! And be sure to keep reading this blog to see what happens in the seven years after Christians reach heaven, and to keep reading worldscollide-culture-Christianity-endoftime.com to see what happens on earth after The Body of Christ is quickly snatched away. And don’t forget to watch “Home for Today and Tomorrow” on You Tube and on Worship Center Radio!